Ifè Oshun: Assorted Rants

The Don Imus bandwagon is reaching full speed with the Black church and Black community leaders finally taking a real stand against negativity in rap music, most recently canceling a celebrity basketball fundraiser at Stamford’s Yerwood Center where rapper Jadakiss and his D-Block crew were scheduled to appear.

According to the Stamford Advocate, the rapper was dissed by Jere Eaton, a former Yerwood Center board member and a potential presidential candidate for the NAACP’s Stamford branch, who was concerned violence would break out at the event.

She was so concerned she hopped online to gather Web site links, articles and lyrics before sending out a warning email blast to community leaders and the media demanding Jadakiss be dropped.

“Under the leadership of Dr. Robert Perry (pastor of Union Baptist Church) and other clergy in Stamford,” she wrote, “we are demanding that the Celebrity Basketball Fundraiser is canceled or ‘CLEAN’ entertainment is provided by artists with ‘CLEAN’ reputations.”

Eaton had previously made her views crystal clear by saying, “All of these artists are the worst of the worst. They’re criminals, their favorite word is the N-word, and they demean women by calling them bitches and hos.”

Deborah Sewell, the Yerwood Center’s president and CEO, canceled the fundraiser after receiving over 60 phone calls expressing concern. There was no time to schedule a replacement.

One leader who spoke out against the event was Rev. Tommie Jackson, pastor of Faith Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church.

“It doesn’t make it right if it’s said by Don Imus or black rap artists,” Jackson opined. “It is antithetical to the morals and values that we’re trying to teach and impart to the sons and daughters of the community.

“The bottom line is we believe that the Yerwood Center needs to raise money, but there are better ways of doing it than bringing in Jadakiss.”

The Stamford Advocate 

At first I prepared to title this post: “Russell Simmons Is A Hypocrite,” but, being a professional, I chose to couch it in neutrality and let you, the dear reader, decide for yourself.

However, I just absolutely have to say I am soooooooo disappointed.

Simmons, the man primarily responsible for building the rap music industry, and who I’ve supported for years, has shown himself to be a real publicity whore.

Case in point, let’s examine the recent controversy still brewing around the derogatory remarks made by radio shock jock Don Imus towards the Rutgers women’s basketball team. When community leaders raised a big stink and caused Imus to get fired, Simmons came out weeks later recommending that the rap industry voluntarily remove the words bitch, ho, and ni**er from songs.

As quoted in the Hollywood Reporter: “These three words should be considered with the same objections to obscenity as extreme curse words.”

However, during an interview I conducted with him five years ago (June, 2001) he was freestyling a totally different verse.

When I asked him how he viewed rap music, he commented on the power that rappers have, but said he wasn’t interested in cleaning up rap.

“There’s not one record that I hear on the radio that I think shouldn’t be on the radio. I want to make this clear. There’s not one record that I find offensive.”

When I brought up the rampant misogyny in the rap industry and how, as a father of a then baby girl, he felt about it, he tripped over his pre-prepared responses and took a long pause, afterwhich he said:

“I feel… that [it is] for parents to govern what their kids’ understanding [is] of what’s in the world. What part of it do they want them to hear at an early age is the parent’s choice and the way they want to explain to them what they hear - if they hear it. Now if you don’t have parents [who can do that]… then it’s a hard world that you’ve fallen into… You can’t stop sexist statements.”

Check the whole interview: Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 and judge for yourself whether Simmons is using the recent controversy as a publicity vehicle for his own interests, namely the Hip-hop Summit and his new forage into Africa’s diamond mines. I can’t help to think that if he truly felt that “bitch,” “ho,” and “ni**er” were “extreme curse word” he would have done something about it decades ago when it could’ve made a real difference.

The latest craze sweeping the nation is “gangsta parties,” where white kids, according to the Mercury News, “dress in gang gear and drink malt liquor from paper bags.”

For real.

“A white Clemson University student attends a bash in black face [oh my] over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend [oh my, my]. A fraternity at Johns Hopkins University invites partygoers to wear “bling bling” grills, or shiny metal caps on their teeth.”

Dumb asses are documenting their ignorance by uploading photos from these parties. Look closely and you will see white kids from the suburbs throwing up gang signs… like this one, shown above and found through a Google search.

WTF? If this chick was ever anywhere near a real Crip in…. say… Compton, she’d sh*t her pink panties… Come to think of it, so would I…

“The segment of rap music that is glamorized and popularized by the media is gangsta rap,” said Venise Berry, an African-American associate professor of journalism at the University of Iowa. “It has become an image that is normalized in our society. That to me explains clearly why they don’t see it as wrong.”

What’s really “wrong” is these people don’t realize how ass-out stupid they look.
“One student wore blackface; another white student put padding in her pants to make her rear end look bigger.”

Ok someone really needs a reality pimp-slap. And a punch… and a good stomp. Hey I’m just ranting, I’m not advocating violence…

But seriously… what’s worse? The people making fun of African American stereotypes, or the morons in the rap industry who continually market these stereotypes and pass it off as “reality.”

I say the latter.

Not that it’s ok to racially mock anyone, these college kids are really out of line, but so are the garbage lyrics and videos from these wanna be gangsta rappers, the majority of whom would crap their pink panties if they were anywhere near real life gangsters.

James Johnson, a black psychology professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington says: “In the civil rights movement, you didn’t have blacks who called themselves `niggers’ and who called their women `bitches’ and `whores’ and who glorified being violent and being thugs. Now these white kids are kind of confused.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

RIP Alice Coltrane.

Almost 50 years ago, Dr. Kenneth Clark conducted a ground-breaking doll test proving African-American children suffered from low self-esteem as a result of internalized racism.

Ironically, in 2007, a highschool student’s documentary shows that not much has changed. This 7 minute film is all over the news, sparking national dialogue and invoking straight-up weeping.

Yeah, I cried.
The doc brings up an important question. Why, oh why are so many young people still suffering from feelings of low self worth despite the progress our society has made? Could our own popular culture be part of the problem?

Hell yes.

Hey, you in power. You rappers and some of you singers who routinely spit “nigga” and “bitch.” Take look at this documentary and recognize.

Yeah, I said “those in power,” ’cause, guess what, if your music and videos are reaching millions of people all over the world, then you, my friend, have power. Power to affect the minds of people. Power to affect a generation. Power to either negate racial stereotypes or perpetuate them.

In the new millennium, it’s not just institutionalized racism that kills our self worth, it’s the songs, albums and videos, filled with lyrics and images of self hate that pass on the legacy of low self esteem.

My 3 year old, the only dark-skinned child in his daycare, came home last week and said he was “black.” As he held his head in his hands, I realized he felt traumatized by the way this information was given to him. I immediately told him he is beautiful, smart and able to do anything he put his mind to. When he smiled, I knew that I’m doing my part to neutralize society’s message that he’s somehow lacking.
And I’ll be damned if I let a rapper tell him otherwise.

Watch the video “A Girl Like Me”

Double kudos to our government for (1) continuing to ignore the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries and (2) fostering an environment where US based corporations can actively lobby to prevent the Chinese government from strengthening their own unions.

Today’s New York Times talks about how, after decades of worker abuses via sweatshops and the like, the Chinese powers-that-be are working to fix the situation by “giving labor unions real power for the first time since it introduced market forces in the 1980’s.”

Most decent people who’ve ever read about sweatshop laborers, many of them children, and the horrid conditions they are forced to work in, would welcome this news, however our government is actively lobbying against it.

Why?

Well since foreign investment has risen since the free market lowering of wages in the 80s, big companies have made a ton of money in China. Now those outrageous profits are in danger of diminishing. God forbid these American companies, such as Disney, or Walmart (recently forced to bow to the Chinese unions) would bring some of these jobs back to the States.

But their attitude towards the Chinese wanting to strengthen their unions is despicable.

“’This is really two steps backward after three steps forward,’ said Kenneth Tung, Asia-Pacific director of legal affairs at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Hong Kong and a legal adviser to the American Chamber of Commerce here.”

Hmmm… I’m sure if Mr. Tung’s balls were sweating in one of these factories, he might have a different view. The Times also reports:

“The skirmish has pitted the American Chamber of Commerce — which represents corporations including Dell, Ford, General Electric, Microsoft and Nike — against labor activists and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the Communist Party’s official union organization.”

Big ups to watchdogs such as Global Labor Strategies (GLS) are issuing criticisms and reports “denouncing American corporations for opposing legislation that would give Chinese workers stronger rights.”
Source: New York Times|CNNMoney 

Also read: Chinese Labor Watch

WTF is wrong with Hollywood? Take a multi-platinum mega-duo (Outkast), at the peak of their career and make a gorgeously shot film starring them and featuring their genre-defying, mainstream embraced music. Don’t ya think it would be a hit?

Well it isn’t, and that’s due to some geniuses deciding Idlewild would only open on a measley 973 screens (the No. 1 movie Invincible, opened on 2, 917 screens). Ironically, the no-brainer became apparent when Idlewild came out way ahead with the largest per-screen average ($5,905) of any of the top movies. So, the fact that it squeezed into the Top 10 at all says a lot.

And… I still stand by my original assertion that comparing Katrina evacuees to African slaves is silly. And as if to prove my point, NFADK led an unwitting lil ole me to actual pictures of enslaved men, women and children taken sometime around 1868. As you look at the faces, and bones sticking through slender frames, you realize that there are so many reasons for emaciation. Not being fed is one, but the anguish of being separated from everything you know and everyone you ever loved could drive many to self starvation. Also, the realization that many of these people could not even share their grief amongst themselves due to different dialects and languages… do you think that the psychological damage suffered by these people could have been assuaged by a cot, the Astrodome and a little sympathy?

Funny how it’s called Google bombing. The layers of meaning go so deep on this one.

I’m assuming this little trick’s been around for a while since I alway seem to be the last one to get forwarded emails, so if you’ve already done this, just bear with my slow ass. If you haven’t, check this out:

Go to Google.com and type in the following word - “failure.”

Now see what comes up as the top result.

Now that’s hot in a sad way. This is the point where you might want to laugh but then you realize you, along with the rest of the free-for-now world, should probably cry.
Google also takes the time to explain their results which shine light, and a glimmer of hope, on the beauty of democracy and free speech.

God bless America. God bless the Internet.

Thanks to mamacita Nina Ames for the email and makethemaccountable.com for the image.

Spike Lee’s documentary, while slightly paranoid in some places (comparing the willy-nilly evacuation of post-Katrina victims and subsequent separation of family members to the planetary-scale devastation of the African slavery trade is ridiculous), brought up tears, memories, and a multitude of broiling political topics.

One particularly interesting segment dealt with the fact that little-to-none of the money generated by Louisiana’s natural resources - which account for roughly 20% of the country’s oil and natural gas - is retained by the state. In one of the four-part documentary’s many in-depth interviews, Douglas Brinkley (“The Great Deluge” author) said the state was treated like “a colony” by the U.S. government, siphoned of its natural resources. This systematic pimping, justified by the offshore three-mile limit rule, results in an absence of state funds needed to build levees that actually work, restore the long-abused protective wetlands, and address New Orleans’ myriad economic weaknesses.

And while radio personality Garland Robinette spat out that if the state had that revenue it would allow the city to get back on its feet, another interviewee pointed out that secession would render the state financially independent and on a par with Saudi Arabia.

But even though Spike treated us to multiple replays of Kanye West’s now infamous statement, he failed to include even a snippet of the impassioned (and eventually nitpicked) “Meet The Press” testimony wrenched out of a wailing Aaron Broussard (president of Jefferson Parish who, irony of ironies, also publicly embraced the notion of secession) recounting the pitiful death of his colleague’s mother. Although gaping holes such as this one warranted, in my honest opinion, another “act,” Lee did a monumental job of making sense out of the numerous issues bubbling under the surface of this still fresh situation.

Aaron Broussard’s classic Meet The Press interview

Thanks to Whatreallyhappened.com for the video.